After the alleged rape of a girl by Syrians, in mid-October, the police chief of Friborg advised women not to become vulnerable by using drugs or alcohol.

The alleged rape of a girl by Syrians on 14 October in Freiburg, a university town in the south-east of the country, shocked the population. As a result of this case, Bernhard Rotzinger, the city’s chief of police, expressed a surprising idea to prevent future attacks. ‘We cannot offer all-risk insurance, but I have a good piece of advice: do not make yourself vulnerable by using drugs or alcohol,’ he told the daily Der Spiegel on 2 November.

Bernhard Rotzinger estimates that the security level is stable in the city, two years after the murder of a young German by the asylum seeker Hussein K. in 2016. The police presence has been increased in Friborg, and since then, there have been fewer violent assaults. But the local police chief notes that ‘since 2016 more sexual assaults were reported’. He attributes this increase to the hardening of the law against sexual assault (the law punishes more acts) and increased sensitivity of the population to these phenomena, leading to more complaints. Moreover, according to the head of the police, the proportion of non-Germans among the perpetrators of these crimes is greater than that of the German citizens.

However, according to Bernhard Rotzinger, the police cannot do everything. ‘We must realize that in an open society, any aggression cannot be prevented,’ he added in his interview with Spiegel.